A Quick Lesson to Improve Your Memoir Writing Skills

I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT ABOUT attraction – specifically, what attracts what and why, and how that phenomenon affects our memoir writing skills.

I bet you are tilting your head right now, just the way my dog Roscoe does when I say anything other than the five words in English that pertain to things he eats. If so, stop tilting, because you need this.

Without understanding the phenomenon of attraction, you will be unable to bring to your work the discernment needed to know both what goes into a specific piece of memoir and what stays out.That’s true whether your work is a blog post, an essay, an op-ed, a long-form essay or a book-length memoir. To successfully write memoir in any form, it helps to believe three things.

They are:

1. Memoir is not a plot-driven genre; it is an argument-driven genre.
2. All non-fiction, including memoir, must prove an argument.
3. The best way to establish your argument is to use our Memoir Project Algorithm.

That’s a whole lot about argument, isn’t it? Yes, and for good reason. Your plot lays out scenes in order, but only by figuring out your argument can you choose which of those scenes you must curate from your life story. You need an argument in that toolbox of your memoir writing skills – and you need to have it figured out first, before you start writing those scenes.

Remember: Memoir is not autobiography. Knowing the difference is essential to your success.

As a lot of good ideas do, this one came to me at 4 AM when only Roscoe might be interested in listening. In this case, he was not.

So here we go. Let’s talk about attraction and writing.

Picture Wooly Willy (see above), a toy that might have delighted you when you were a child. You had to use a little magnetic wand to create beards, mustaches or a full head of hair on the otherwise bald and clean-shaven Willy. That is, you had to first attract those metal shavings, then place them correctly on the image of the face to build what we recognize as a beard, a mustache or a floppy head of hair.

In my 4 AM metaphor, the scenes of your life are those shavings and your argument is that magnetic wand. What’s the logic here? It’s this: With an argument at hand, you will attract only those scenes needed to tell this one tale, to illustrate this one argument, to complete this one piece of memoir.

I created The Memoir Project Algorithm to help you do this. On its slender construction, you can build a writing life. Let me show you how:

It’s about x, as illustrated by y, to be told in a z.

What does it mean? It’s about something universal as illustrated by your deeply personal tale, to be told in some form. The z is always the form, or length, of the piece – a blog post, essay, op-ed, long-form essay or book.

What’s that x? It’s your argument, and while I’ve written volumes on that, let me refresh all that with this Wooly Willy-specific update. The Memoir Project Algorithm does several essential things: First, that argument (your magnetic wand) shoves you offstage and gives you one single, well-identified topic to search for in that vast subconscious of yours. What you attract (those metal shavings) will help you build what readers can identify as a compelling piece (beard, mustache, head of hair).

Remember: Memoir is not about you, and memoir is not about what you did; memoir is about what you did with it.

Who’s on center stage? Wooly Willy is. What have you got to build him? A magic, magnetic wand, as defined by what you are arguing – which, in turn, is defined as what you know after that you’ve been through.

What am I arguing in this piece I just wrote above?

Find your argument and your scenes will then show up. What’s the algorithm for this blog post? That when you find an argument for your piece of memoir, your scenes will appear, as illustrated by the metaphor of Wooly Willy, to be told in a blog post.

Write on.

Want more help? Join me in live, online memoir classes

Start here, with The Memoir Project System Page, to understand the breadth of all the classes we teach.

Want to jump right in? Here’s a sampling of our classes:

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

And keep in mind that I am now taking names for the next  Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month, and limited to seven writers. In the Master Class, you’ll get a first draft of your memoir finished in six months.

photo credit: Patch Products